Amerika

• Kori Muhammad convicted of murder for Fresno mass shooting

  He was found guilty of first degree murder in the death of Jackson and the jury ruled that he was intentionally killed because of his race. Muhammad was also found guilty of second degree murder for the deaths of Randalls and Gassett.

  Muhammad was arrested by Fresno Police officers shortly after the mass shooting, and during a confession said he targeted white men.

  His conviction for the first degree murder of Jackson with the special circumstances of hate crime and multiple murders make this a possible death penalty case.

• Poll: Americans’ views of China darken dramatically

  Two-thirds of Americans now view China unfavorably, up from 47% two years ago, according to data from Pew that suggests the increasingly adversarial approach from Washington is spreading throughout the country.

  Americans have tended to view China negatively since 2013, but that sentiment has grown dramatically over the past two years amid the U.S-China trade war and, more recently, the coronavirus pandemic. In that time, the proportion of Americans who view China very unfavorably has more than doubled (15% to 33%).

  Nine-in-10 Americans now view China as a threat, with 62% viewing China as a major threat — up from 48% in 2018.

• Lululemon fires employee over ‘bat fried rice’ shirt

  Soon after Trevor Fleming, an art director for Lululemon Athletica, posted a link to the T-shirt in the bio section of his personal Instagram account, waves of online condemnation followed, and he was fired by the Canadian athletic apparel company. By a Reuters count, more than 1,000 comments were left on Lululemon’s official Instagram account criticizing the company for Fleming’s post.

  “As a brand that advocates for a positive and healthy lifestyle, we are against all racist behavior. Lululemon’s brand, core values and culture represent our stance. We will treat this event very seriously.”

  They equate wanting your people erased with healthy behavior and being sociable. If we really were in a congenial, free, open, and accepting environment, we could talk honestly about these things. True, this tshirt may have been in a bit of poor taste, but it also points to something that is on every mind: China let this happen, and we want to say “no thank you” to globalism, immigration, diversity, and international finance.

  

• Screen time for babies linked to higher risk of autism-like symptoms later in childhood

  Controlling for gender, race, maternal age, and prematurity, the team found that viewing screens at 12 months of age was associated with four percent greater ASD-like symptoms, and daily play time with a parent compared to less than daily play time was associated with nine percent less ASD-like symptoms. The findings back recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics which discourages screen time in children younger than 18 months, unless it is used for video chatting.

  It was not Orwell after all. Government does not force us to keep telescreens in our homes; we do it to fill the void of lack of purpose and a dying civilization. Distraction pales in comparison to having an actual direction however, and so the circular crisis intensifies as we try to solve problems caused by our methods with more of those methods:

  Face the enemy
  Maniac thoughts
  Religious intervention
  Problems remain

• Here’s what’s behind the Senate-House disputes on Russian meddling in 2016 election

  More gravely, they said that CIA Director Brennan suppressed facts or analysis that showed why it was not in Russia’s interests to support Trump and why Putin stood to benefit from Hillary Clinton’s election. They also told me that Brennan suppressed that intelligence over the objections of CIA analysts.

• Canada police accused of poor communication during Nova Scotia mass shooting

  During the worst mass shooting in the country’s history, the Nova Scotia provincial detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) sent a series of tweets to about 90,000 followers warning that there was an active shooter in the area.

  But some of the families and friends of the victims said a provincial warning system, which would have sent out text, radio and TV warnings, might have saved the lives of their loved ones.

  When democracy ages, it becomes a popularity contest, and so you get people who are good at public relations but terrible at practical decisions.

• The Deadly Losharik Submarine Fire and Russia’s Secret Undersea Agenda

  To understand why these men may have found themselves on a submarine that can dive to perhaps 20,000 feet — more than 10 times deeper than crewed American subs are believed to operate — consider what crisscrosses the floor of the North Atlantic: endless miles of fiber-optic cables that carry a large fraction of the world’s internet traffic, including trillions of dollars in financial transactions. There are also cables linking the sonar listening devices that litter the ocean floor.

  …Russian generals, for example, speak openly of sowing chaos in the government financial system of an adversary, Professor Zysk said, and disrupting seabed cables “would certainly fit into the objective.”

  Russia-China are preparing for war.

• Victorville man, 24, arrested after pursuit released from jail hours later due to zero bail in CA

  “During the pursuit, Porter drove erratically at excessive speeds through residential neighborhoods and ran multiple stop signs in the process. The pursuit covered approximately 1.6 miles and came to an end when Ported stopped the Jaguar in the 14600 block of Rosemary Dr,” stated sheriff’s officials.

  “In compliance with the statewide Emergency Bail Schedule, issued by the California Judicial Council, bail for most misdemeanor and felony offenses must be set at $0. Because of this criteria, David Deon Porter was booked into High Desert Detention Center and released from custody following the booking process,” stated sheriff’s officials.

  Status signaling collides with reality.

• Boycott TikTok: Netizens Express Anger Over China For Introducing Coronavirus, Say ‘Make China Pay’

  Hashtags such as #MakeChinaPay and #ChinaLiedPeopleDied are trending on Twitter. In India, the hatred over China are rising with each day. Trends such as #BoycottTikTok and #BoycottChineseProducts were also the top trends. Tik Tok being a companion to many Indians during quarantine, is being called out for Boycott.

  Another tweeted, “No More Use of Chinese Products. 1st Step… Many More to Go.. #BoycottChina #DeleteTikTok #IndiaVsCorona.”

• Excessive rain triggered 2018 Kīlauea volcano eruption, study finds

  “We knew that changes in the water content in the Earth’s subsurface can trigger earthquakes and landslides. Now we know that it can also trigger volcanic eruptions,” said Falk Amelung, professor of geophysics at the UM Rosenstiel School and coauthor of the study. “Under pressure from magma, wet rock breaks easier than dry rock. It is as simple as that.”

• World Bank warns of collapse in money sent home by migrant workers

  Remittances to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are projected to fall by nearly 20% to $445bn (£360bn), “representing the loss of a crucial financial lifeline for many vulnerable households”, the World Bank said.

  Remittances total about three times the amount of aid received by low-income countries and have become a cornerstone of living standards across the developing world.

  Migrants typically send money to their families to boost living standards in some of the poorest parts of the world, including south Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and South America. Eastern Europe is expected to be one of the worst-hit regions as migrant workers in western Europe and Russia are forced to cut back the amounts they send back to families in Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine and other former Soviet bloc countries.

  Globalism has died. Trump broke many of the cycles by forcing Europe to pay for its own defense, tightening American immigration, and renegotiating contracts in order to put the third world on a level playing field, reducing much of their cost advantage gained by refusing to accept our products. Now as the economic system that relies on outsourced labor collapses, replacements will be found, and they will be hard to displace.

• New iOS exploit discovered being used to spy on China’s Uyghur minority

  Volexity said the exploit was deployed by a threat actor the company is tracking under the name of Evil Eye.

  The Evil Eye group is believed to be a state-sponsored hacking unit operating at Beijing’s behest, and spying on China’s Uyghur Muslim minority.

  This is the same group that Google and Volexity discovered in August 2019 using 14 iOS exploits to target Uyghurs since at least September 2016. The 14 exploits were also deployed using a similar tactic — using a “watering hole” technique to plant the exploit on a website and wait users to visit it.

  People who trust Apple not to be a ramshackle chaotic mess under the slick exterior must be unfamiliar with the history of the company over the past four decades. Apple got three things right: (1) technology should be aesthetically appealing (2) it should not require much technical knowledge and (3) it should work right out of the box. To do this, they reduced flexibility, which enabled them to sell older technology and chaotic software since their technology focuses only on common uses and is rigidly hostile to anything else. This reverses the 1970s-era hacker ethos of the company.

• Stimulus bankrolls 22% jump in pornography site traffic, 204% in hard-hit Washington state

  “What’s especially interesting is that many people are splurging on adult entertainment and indulging their sexual fantasies. Since April 13, we’ve seen a 22% uptick in traffic to our livestreaming site, and tips to our models have increased by 40%,” he told us.

  Government creates consumerism: “free” money gets spent on trivialities and trinkets, creating a market for those, which since it is both fickle and memoryless, favors companies inconsistently. This works against demand for quality and instead favors demand for novelty, but government loves it because it kicks up economic activity which justifies more borrowing and more taxes.

• Food Rationing Confronts Shoppers Once Spoiled for Choice

  The strong demand comes at a time of supply disruptions as food makers adapt to dramatic shifts in buying patterns and some processing plants close as workers fall ill. As a result, stores are restricting purchases to prevent items from vanishing from shelves.

  This reverses the the American consumer miracle that brought down Communism. For all its abundance, our system is not resilient nor durable, and because it is driven by consumer attitudes and not sober judgments about long-term needs, it quickly collapses when its economic environment changes.

• China seeks ‘new world media order’ says watchdog, as Hong Kong plunges to 80th in press freedom index

  “China, which is trying to establish a ‘new world media order,’ maintains its system of information hyper-control, of which the negative effects for the entire world have been seen during the coronavirus public health crisis.” The NGO cited the arrest of three citizen journalists who reported on the coronavirus crisis as an example of the extensive censorship and suppression of media freedom during the pandemic.

  Twenty-first century totalitarianism: you are free to say anything, except that which might destabilize the regime. Like political correctness, this robs people of words and concepts to do anything but praise the way things are going and demand more of it. It evolved from the problem of twentieth century totalitarianism, which was that when government runs the media and industry, people know not to trust it; now, private industry simply bows to government so that it can continue to receive favorable treatment.

• Japan preps first subsidy to company moving production out of China

  The new coronavirus has stalled manufacturing and logistics around the world, especially in exposing the vulnerabilities of Japanese companies, which rely on China for more than 20% of their parts and materials needs.

  Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has come out in support of investments to strengthen domestic production and procurement networks. “Products that depend on one country and have high added value will be returned to Japan as production bases,” Abe said during a government meeting last month. “Even if the products do not depend on one nation, and do not have high added value, the manufacturing will be diversified to ASEAN.”

  Globalism is over. No one can afford a complete business shutdown. Countries Japan and the USA will be working to reduce their non-salary worker costs — unions, high taxes, affirmative action, expensive regulations, lawsuits — so that manufacturing and services can come back home. That will in turn displace immigrants from many of these jobs.

• Oil Surges as Trump Orders U.S. Navy to ‘Shoot Down’ Iranian Ships if They ‘Harass’ American Vessels

  Brent crude futures contracts for June delivery, the benchmark reference for around 60% of global crude purchases, jumped $1.56 per barrel from last night’s close following the President’s Tweet, to change hands at $20.89 each heading into the end of the session, after trading as low as $15.98 per barrel — a 1999 trough — in early European dealing.

  Trump seems dangerous, but he actually pushes us farther from war, since setting clear lines and boundaries eliminates confusion and ambiguity which could serve as a Petri dish for military activity that might kick off a war. The world responds, as always, to a strong leader.

• Cranes make comeback in Britain’s wetlands

  The graceful crane – the tallest bird in the UK – is making a comeback into Britain’s wetlands thanks to re-introduction and habitat restoration.

  Restoring habitats and keeping humans out of them makes all the difference.

• Facebook to label national origin of popular posts

  For instance, an Instagram account targeting U.S. voters but based in Brazil will have every post labeled with “Based in Brazil.” Users then can swipe to find out more information about the account.

  The information war of our time turns out not to be cyberwar, but to be censorship warfare, as democracies try to prevent their unhinged citizens from following all of the propaganda from foreign sources.

• Microplastics found in Antarctic ice core sample taken 10 years ago

  The researchers from IMAS and the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) found 96 microplastic particles in the decade-old ice core from 14 different types of polymer, including polyethylene which is used in plastic bags.

  Our economic and technological successes come at a price. When everyone had just enough, and not more, we were happier and less destructive.

• Fitch cites Hong Kong’s increasing closeness to China as a reason for rating downgrade

  The linkages between Hong Kong and mainland China “economically, financially and from a sociopolitical perspective have continued to gradually rise over time,” noted Andrew Fennell, senior director of Asia-Pacific sovereigns at Fitch Ratings.

  “So, as a ratings agency, in thinking about where Hong Kong should sit in the rating relative to mainland China, we thought that that gradual integration means the ratings should be closer together,” he told CNBC’s “Capital Connection” on Wednesday.

  China knows that it has showed us its true nature with the coronavirus and its economic play-acting since its economy began to slide in 2009. It has no plan, since its boom is entirely contingent upon the West, and low quality of Chinese products plus concerns over espionage mean that Western industry is consciously decoupling from China. Like Russia, it has only one option left: war.

• Watchdog subpoenas Google for Hillary Clinton emails

  Judicial Watch, a conservative-leaning, D.C.-based watchdog group, announced this week that it had served a subpoena against the Silicon Valley tech firm as part of its Freedom of Information Act court battle seeking all of Clinton’s emails from her time as secretary of state, including the tens of thousands that were deleted from her private email server.

  A lie can travel around the world ten revolutions in the time it takes the truth to put its pants on, as the saying goes. Eventually, things come out. The Left formerly was able to use the memory hole and its dominance of media to make anything unseemly disappear, but now that advantage is dying with legacy media and faith in an increasingly-censorious social media landscape.

• Australia’s threatened mammals decline by more than a third since 1990s, but there’s a silver lining

  Populations declined by more than a third on average over the 20-year period — but the data also revealed that targeted conservation efforts are working.

  We are erasing the diversity of life from this planet, so no wonder we talk about human diversity so much.

• BDS activists disrupt Holocaust event with Hitler imagery

  A group of pro-Palestinian activists in Germany disrupted an online Holocaust memorial by posting Nazi imagery and pornographic content during a conversation with the survivors of the genocide.

  The Left hates the Jews now because the Jews stand in the way of the (brown) Palestinians achieving equality-Utopia. This shows us the idiocy of anti-Semitism: instead of saying that Jews need a place, and only Jews and all Jews go there, the anti-Semites simply want to eradicate them, which redirects our attention from the task of making our civilization great into some weird punitive revenge fantasy along the lines of the Jacobins.

• Dutch Supreme Court expands euthanasia laws for dementia patients

  The ruling is a landmark in Dutch euthanasia legislation which up to now had required patients to confirm euthanasia requests. This had not been considered possible for mentally incapacitated patients like advanced dementia sufferers.

  Society is growing up regarding the sanctity of human life. Mindlessly preserving life, with no regard to quality, violates the sanctity of life by bringing out all the negative in life. Pruning away the useless and improving quality pushes us upward, and we live the best possible life. However, this new rule will surely be abused by Dutch Gen-Xers: “Look, she drooled. Get the needle!”

• New York state’s unemployment system ‘collapsed’ following a surge in claims, Gov. Cuomo says

  New York’s unemployment website “collapsed” following a surge in claims after the state shuttered nonessential businesses to curb the coronavirus pandemic, putting a record number of New Yorkers out of work, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday.

  We pay so much — in time, money, energy, and attention span — for these democrat-bureaucrat systems, only to have them fail when they are actually needed. How many 400lb bureaucrats does it take to process an unemployment application? All of them, apparently.

• Death toll rises to 22 in Nova Scotia shooting rampage, police say

  In the wake of the shootings, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his administration is moving ahead with stricter gun laws.

  “In regards to gun control, we took very serious commitments in the election campaign and have moved forward — and are moving forward on them — to ensure that we’re strengthening gun control in this country,” Trudeau told reporters Monday, according to CNN media partner CTV News.

  Democracy follows a simple script: use every tragedy to increase the power of the bureaucracy and make people helpless droids of the system.

• Eight of 10 most-banned books challenged for LGBTQ content

  “Books with LGBTQ characters and themes have regularly been among the most challenged,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, told NBC News. “The trend dates back to the ‘90s, when Nancy Garden’s ‘Annie on my Mind’ was banned by a school board in Texas, and we’ve seen an increase in organized efforts to pull these books from school and community libraries in recent years, especially books that include transgender characters.”

  Normal people want normal ideals and values for their children to follow. The neurotic Left wants to preach confusion, degeneracy, promiscuity, and rootlessness as values. LGBTP+ books only get focus because they are the most obvious; in reality, we need to stop supporting any of this garbage for anyone. We need a cultural wave pushing back against degeneracy of all forms, and favoring the wholesome.

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